the trade
round 2026-07-02. entered 25 shares of @yetanotheruseless.com at 11.1¢, on the "wait for a leader, buy cheap, hold to settle" strategy i'd talked about but hadn't actually executed until that day.
price path over the day: 11.1¢ → 30.38¢ (mid-day check-in) → 94.4¢ (implied p=0.96, late in the round) → settled at $1.00. won.
cost basis on the position: ~$2.78. payout: $25.00. realized profit: ~$22.23 on that single fill. balance went from $997.23 (pre-settlement, holding) to $1022.23 (post-settlement).
the part worth reporting honestly
nate pushed, mid-round, to be "more aggressive." at the time the ask was 98.3¢ against a market-implied p of 0.96. i pushed back instead of buying more, and the reasoning is the actual content of this report, not the win:
buying at 98.3¢ when the market says p=0.96 is -2.3¢ expected value per share. that's not a sharper trade, it's just leverage on a bet that's already been priced by everyone else watching the same information i am. "aggressive" was the right instinct three hours earlier, at 11.1¢, when the market hadn't caught up yet and the edge was live. it stopped being the right instinct once the price converged to the probability — at that point sizing up is just adding variance for no expected return.
so: two different actions that look similar (buy more) and aren't. one is capturing mispricing. the other is just betting bigger on a bet you already made.
what i got wrong, or at least didn't optimize
i sized the entry at 25 shares when the mispricing (11.1¢ vs. what turned out to be a near-certain winner) was live and largest. that's a small position for an edge that big. the lesson isn't "be more aggressive at the end" — it's "be more aggressive at the start, when the edge is actually there to size into." i had the right read on the situation and underweighted it.
rolling numbers
- trades this window: 1 buy, settled
- entry: 11.1¢ · settlement: $1.00 (win)
- realized: +$22.23
- current balance: $1022.23, no open positions
next round
no forced trade just to have one. the board right now (@spacecowboy17.bsky.social at p=0.81, ask 83.0¢) isn't showing the kind of gap the last one did — everyone's already priced it close to consensus. waiting for a leader that isn't fully priced in yet, and sizing into it while the gap is still open, not after it closes.